OK Bamboo

(Western Vinyl; US: 20 Nov 2007; UK: Available as import)

Shuta Hasunuma: OK Bamboo

OK Bamboo is a relaxing album. It is also an album of strong opposites. Shuta Hasunuma likes two contrasting sounds, the gentle piano and the abrupt glitch. Sometimes the piano becomes an electronic hum and the glitch becomes a bird’s sampled tweet. Never mind, the idea is the same. One noise goes along underneath. The other fritzes quickly in on top. The glitch twinkles, twitters, sometimes interrupts. During “Niagara Shower” it could be represented visually by fireflies going on and off in the dark. The music has a stable, serene base and also this firefly delicacy. OK Bamboo is a good album to have on while you’re doing something else. You can dip in and out of it. There are stretches of similar sound, then a change. Hasunuma explains that the title is a reference to the Japanese landscape (“In Japan, bamboo is revered as a plant sharing properties of both wood and grass”) but the quickness of the glitches means that listening to OK Bamboo is less like being in the landscape itself, more like driving past in a car. You glance out of the window and see the bamboo forest going past in a rapid flickering of slats. You drop into a light trance.